Hemp-Based Paper: Production, Advantages And Application

Did you know that the United States Declaration of Independence was written on a hemp paper? Yes, hemp paper is that old a discovery and the credit of its disappearance from the market is to be given to the businessmen of that age who were keen on making paper using trees.



However, things have changed after almost two centuries and hemp is back in the game. Apart from the production of hemp oil products, industrialists are experimenting with hemp in different sectors including the paper industry.

Hemp Paper Production and Its Advantages Over Our Paper

There’s no secret around making hemp paper, it’s made fairly the same way the normal papers are made. There’s just a minor (actually major) difference in the ingredients: Instead of using the pulp of trees, hemp papers are made using the pulp of the hemp stalks. Hemp fibers are shredded, beaten, or boiled to make them smaller and are then processed to turn them into pulp. This pulp is compressed into sheets and dried further for the final product. Seems about the same, right?

However, if there’s not much difference in the production technique, why are hemp papers considered better? Let’s clear that objectively! Here are a few reasons why:

Hemp is an eco-friendly plant. The stalks don’t need much water and grow exponentially faster than the trees used for paper production.

The qualitative rule of paper production is that the levels of cellulose must be high. More the cellulose content, the better the structure of the paper. Now, hemp is 85% cellulose while trees are more or less 35% cellulose. Cellulose is needed to be stripped down before processing it and when its amount is as less as 35% more chemicals are needed in handling that process. So, hemp is also economically better.

Hemp fibers are known for its strength and resilience. The life of a hemp paper is much more than of a normal paper.

The durability of hemp paper makes it a better choice for creating thin sheets, canvases, and any other product that needs a longer life.

Things Made Better Of Hemp Paper

1) Tea Bags

Tea drinkers, give it a thought, what if your tea bag would crumple like a normal paper when dipped? Gross, right? When tea bags are made using the fibers of wood, hemp, and some plastic polymers, they take their optimum form of being porous, resilient, and durable.

2) Art Paper 

Artists would know the pain of bad absorption of canvasses, right? Well, your idols, Van Gogh and Rembrandt used hemp canvasses for creating their art. Hemp art canvases are much more durable which lets the painter work on their ideas as per their time which they normally cannot do because of the poor durability of the normal paper.

3) Hygiene Products

Hemp paper can be an ideal choice for manufacturing hygiene products such as diapers and sanitary pads. Because they naturally have antibacterial properties and a higher absorption capacity, they can eliminate the probability of infections.

So yes, CBD manufacturing is a huge part of the hemp industry, but there can be much more to it. We are seeing the rise in the number of CBD distributors and CBD suppliers; the time is not in the far distance when hemp paper distributors will be available in the same number.

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